is leading the OTT mobile VoIP market despite competition.
Independent OTT mVoIP providers like Google Voice,
Fring, Line2, Nimbuzz, Talkonaut, ThruTu, and Truphone are
working to differentiate from Skype and operator-driven OTT services such
as T-Mobile’s Bobsled and Telefónica’s TU Me by making their service
easier to use, lowering prices, integrating social networking, and adding video
features.
“In the crowded OTT mobile VoIP
market, Microsoft/Skype still dominates; however, while the tight
integration of Skype with Windows Mobile 8 is important, the Windows Mobile
operating system remains a distant player in the smartphone race,” said Diane
Myers, Infonetics Research’s principal analyst for VoIP and IMS.
With OTT mVoIP subscribers paying an average of only $14 per
year, sustaining an OTT mobile VoIP service is extremely challenging, and most
providers face daunting possibilities: go out of business or sell to a larger
organization; or find a way to drive revenue beyond cheap calling.
The number of global OTT mobile VoIP subscribers more than
doubled from 2010 to 2011, to 98 million, with about 40 percent of the
subscribers based in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa).
With the first VoLTE services launching in late 2012,
Infonetics expects the number of global VoLTE subscribers to reach about
300,000 this year.
AT&T plans to have VoLTE in place by 2013,
and Clearwire announced that it will offer VoLTE when it launches its
TD-LTE network by mid-2013.
